“Your servant, Mr. Tregenna. I am quite well, I thank you,” replied Joan, with a curtsey. It seemed to him there was in her brown eyes, as she looked quickly up and down again, a malicious suggestion that she had heard all about his unlucky encounter with the smugglers the day before. “You will bear me no good will to-day, Miss Joan, since I come to obtain a warrant against your friends the free-traders,” said he, perceiving that her glance wandered at once in the direction of the brigadier. “I guessed as much, sir. Indeed, the doings yesterday put the village in an uproar. They say you had a brush with some of the boldest spirits about here?” “I’ faith, ’tis true, madam. I made acquaintance with Jem Bax, in particular, and I do e’en propose that, in return, he shall make acquaintance with the inside of a jail.” At his mention of the name, Joan suddenly smiled, as if with an irresistible impulse to great amusement. She pursed up her lips again in a moment, but Tregenna, much nettled, said dryly— “Doubtless, Miss Joan, you have some kindness for that young knave also, though he played me the scurviest trick I have ever known.” And with that he proceeded to give her an account of his own compassion upon the lad, and of Jem’s ungrateful return. There was some satisfaction, however, in seeing how Joan took this recital. Her face clouded as she listened; and when he ended, there were tears in her eyes. “’Twas infamous, sir, shameful, to treat you so, after what you had done,” cried she, with a heightened color in her cheeks and the sparkle of indignation in her eyes. “And if they treat you like that again, I’ll be a turncoat myself, and do my best to help you against—Jem.” “You speak,” said Tregenna, with curiosity, “as if that bit of a lad were the ringleader of the gang.” Again Joan shot at him a glance in which there was some amusement. But she answered demurely— “He is old for his years, sir, I believe.” “Well, Miss Joan, I shall think my experience of yesterday worth the risk if it but bring you to our side, the side of law and of justice.” By this time he saw that the brigadier had got the ear of the squire, and that he had turned to see why his companion had deserted him. Tregenna, therefore, with a low bow to Joan, re-mounted and rode across the grass to join him. Squire Waldron, though by no means in the best of humors at this interruption to the serious business of fox-hunting, made out the warrants as desired by Tregenna and General Hambledon; but he took care to twit them with their ill success against the smugglers, and with their failure to catch “Gardener Tom.” Tregenna took these reproaches modestly, but the brigadier blustered, and said that he was ready to be shot if he did not bring one or more of the ringleaders among the smugglers back to Rye with him that afternoon.